The Nonhuman Demand

Abstract

This article seeks to address the question of humanity and animality through an elaboration of what will be called here the ‘nonhuman demand’. It aims to problematize the category of the ‘posthuman’ through a critical reading of Rosi Braidotti's 2013 book which bears that name. It is argued that the question of humanity and animality can only be adequately addressed in the context of a nonhuman demand that is made upon thought and to which thought must respond. Rather than an idealizing and all too philosophical conception of the ‘posthuman’, the article concludes with reference to both Jean-Luc Nancy and François Laruelle that it is possible to think the ‘nonhuman’ as instance immanent to all and every kind of existence, human and inhuman alike. This ‘nonhuman’ instance can be taken as the basis of a consistently egalitarian thinking of humanity in its relation to animality.